Okay, so that absolutely ridiculous headline means Shouse needs a weekend. And there’s a pineapple vodka gimlet with my name on it waiting at Matchbox, with a Unibroue beer for a chaser.

Now for the point of the headline: Tomorrow and Sunday mark the annual organic plant seedling sale at Kilbourn Park Greenhouse. This sale is (1) always awesome (they have fantastic heirloom tomatoes and any other edible plant you can think of), (2) always packed, (3) the best way to save money this summer by growing your own eats, and (4) the best way to avoid nightmarish lines at Stanley’s when all you need is a handful of basil. Hit it up after you’re done cruising all the farmers’ markets on our list.

So go. Buy lots. Plant them quick. Watch them grow.

Sat 17 and Sun 18, 10am–2pm (3501 N Kilbourn Ave).

Here’s something you don’t see every day: An Internet game that combines practical, real-world skills with giant-headed freaks. Such is the beauty behind Adult Swim’s Amateur Surgeon, a gem on the TV station’s loaded site. You assume the role of the doctor, and your job is to use the given tools to perform comical procedures on your patients, who have suffered from things like "badger in the chest." The game walks you though what you need to do, including cauterizing wounds and putting pain-relief juice on them. Now, I’m no GED-taker, but isn’t stapling people’s lungs and burning them not the best practice? I disagree, says this game.

Keep a steady hand—you get docked beats per minute for pulling out shards of glass too quickly (keep an eye on your patient’s heart rate, and don’t let it drop too far) . Also, don’t do what I tried to do (at first) and play using a Bluetooth mouse. Trust me, the minor lag in response will make your head hurt.

The 10-year-old Artistic Home decided to leave its digs on Irving Park Road last summer with the intention of setting up shop in Pilsen. When that deal fell through (and a new lease on the Irving Park space had already been signed by Chemically Imbalanced Comedy) the company was left (artistically) homeless.

In a nice bit of serendipity, it turns out the Artistic Home’s new home will be right around the corner from its old home. Live Bait Theater heads Sharon Evans and John Ragir made it known a couple of months back that they’d tired of maintaining their facility at Clark and Byron and were looking to sell or lease the space. Today they announced that their new tenants will be the Artistic Home’s Kathy Scambiatterra and John Mossman (both companies are run by husband-and-wife teams). That’s good news for all involved, maintaining the Clark facility as a theater. (It’s been used by numerous itinerant companies in addition to Live Bait—Artistic Home is already renting there, opening their production of Juno and the Paycock this Sunday. With multiple spaces in the building, Artistic Home will presumably continue to rent to others.) Evans says Live Bait will continue to produce its yearly Fillet of Solo festival, most likely at Lifeline Theatre.

Local sketch comedy troupe Schadenfreude is bringing its Rent Party Tour to the Hideout tomorrow, with a return of the (not-really) Alternative Media Slam.

Last year, TOC’s Comedy editor Steve Heisler and I went up against Chicagoist, Gapers Block and the Chicago Reader in a throwdown of epic proportions. Unfortunately, our elaborate mix of skits, props and dialogue resulted in an ass-handing-to in the first round by Chicagoist’s 8th grade-style mom jokes, so we spent the rest of the night at the bar. The Chicago Reader was the eventual winner, though looking back on their performance that night, I think we’ll be stealing their tactic of putting all our friends in the front for the audience voting since that seemed to make up for a lot of their lame jokes. The Reader has cowardly bowed out this year so RedEye is stepping into its place.

But we’re not the best reason to take the North Avenue bus tomorrow, oh no! Claire Zulkey and Steve Delahoyde will be there, bringing the noise. And Hood Internet will be on-hand with the ass-shaking jams, while JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound will add some soulful goodness.

Be at the Hideout tomorrow at 9pm. Cover is $10.

I love Adblock for Firefox, but Brooklyn artist Steve Lambert has developed an even better plug-in: Add-Art replaces all the seizure-inducing Flash and pesky banners with images by contemporary artists and a smidgen of Seurat and Klimt. Every two weeks, “an emerging or established curator” will choose 5–8 new artists who will have their work featured through the application, which Lambert created with the help of NYC-based nonprofit Eyebeam.

(via Tyler Green’s Modern Art Notes. For more information, see this article by C-Monster.)

Here’s something to consider: At what point in a super-famous stand-up comedian’s career do they relax? I ask because last night’s Eddie Izzard’s set was pretty low-key. Which is odd, considering the man’s worked his way up through caked-on makeup, countless sold-out tours, and a sweet gig on The Riches.

Chalk it up to the fairly elaborate set pieces (long, flowing curtains that resembled a jail cell scratched with hash marks and a computerized window that flashed animations of eyes and the moon), but any of the raw stand-up magic I associate with a truly stellar performance was lost on me. Izzard—who sets out to talk about religion and how, in his eyes, God either doesn’t exist or isn’t doing so great a job—stayed on point only half the time. The rest was a mix of elaborations (like how even people who spoke Latin thought it was a stupid language) that, had they been less polished, would have actually come off as funnier. Instead, everything—every gesture, every accidental turn-of-phrase, even the gag where he looked up the etymology of the word assassins on Wikipedia real-time on his iPhone—was polished to a shine. A shiny stand-up robot.

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Wow. Was last night’s Office season finale near-perfect or what? If you haven’t seen it, stop reading. But you have no excuses.

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Not a ton of exciting stuff to talk about today re: Lost—last night’s episode was a building block to the finale, which begins its multiple week run in two weeks. But this is Lost: There’s always something. More after the jump.

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